They were right when they told you
money can't buy love,
but feigned infatuation is
inexpensive and fun.
Give them just one hundred
and they'll **** out your soul.
Don't worry, you won't need it back,
the best rides end up down below.

Autumn leaves exposed nerves,
not ready for winter.

Toes gasp through clay,
never long enough yet
flayed arms extend.

Fingers fall from reach,
sapwoods freeze like blood
beneath blizzard winds.

Spring is too late.

Now and then I walk through a graveyard at midnight.
Partly for exercise, but mostly to pick out my plot.

You need to see tombstones after dark to get things right.
The sun doesn't dance over etched letters gracefully
like the moon, and the shadows are too thick.

Maybe there's a shared finality between darkness
and death that makes them fit perfectly together.

Maybe when we close our eyes we're just getting
comfortable with the eternal darkness we'll meet.

All I can do is find where I belong before the end,
walking the aisles where the dead inform the still living.
Where still darkness and spectral light marry.

I will find where I belong for this time of living,

and the rest.

Time is ageless,
sadly most just can't look past what we're not.

I loved how my great-grandma said "I'm ninety-two years young,"
when all the young ones would fret that she was so near the end.
She spent all of her time so far ahead of her time,
loving what time she had instead of staring down the second hand.

I want to live in a world where counting up is the normative,
where age is the cumulative of positives, not a death march.
We need to lose the mentality of counting down our mortality
while making life a banality, 'cause every day here is a treasure.

When clocks are kept on shelves
instead of burned in our minds,
no time is spent counting down.

It's only spent living.

Spring's first dew is doo-doo next to the dew that you do when I do you.

broken windows framed with faded green trim
un-invite passers by with the darkness
they seem to project through the curtains grim
and wriggling slightly against the sharpness
of the glass left standing in the open
mouths of walls that seem to no longer have
reason to stand now that the Smith children
grew and moved and lived and died all while half
the rooms in the house collected dust and
sat waiting for the rest to abandon
the tile floors and wood cabinets and grand
piano and frames on the now barren
walls streaked with dirt instead of times gone by
just waiting to be torn down by and by

Every noon we sit for food,
sit in chairs cold as tombstones
even after waiting in the sun.
On cloudy days they are ice
and we wonder why the wood
and iron have so much hate.

I believed only men could hate,
and pondered while having my food.
We only bring bowls made of wood
as they don’t mark the tombstones,
but like the chairs they are ice,
unaffected by the sun.

My thoughts fixate on the sun
and how light does not wash hate
but should be melting the ice
while we prepare our midday food.
Still cold are the pieces of wood
we use, and the dark tombstones.

Now I know that the wood
is simply blocked from the sun,
and the heavy tombstones
siphon off of our hate
to use as bitter food
to help them maintain the ice.

I came to realize the ice
is not only in the wood
but covering our food,
defying the warmth of the sun.
We realize that our hate
is why there are tombstones.

All the hard etched tombstones
are now three feet beneath ice
next to us, and our hate
in the iron and wood.
We pray for brighter sun
and some stronger food.

But heavy food won’t delay our tombstones.
Nor the brightest sun melt our ice
stuck in wood boxes, strengthened with hate.